(a) Field of the Invention
An exemplary embodiment of the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for scanning in a mobile communication system supporting a multi-carrier.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In a mobile communication environment, a state of a mobile station that succeeds in accessing a serving base station (BS) is classified as a base station connected state, and may be departmentalized into an active mode for transmitting and receiving data traffic, a power saving mode, and a scanning mode for collecting information on a neighbor BS in accordance with an operation performed by the mobile station.
In the mobile communication environment using a multi-carrier, the mobile station is connected to the base station through one carrier, and the base station manages the state and mobility of the mobile station through the carrier. The carrier that the mobile station uses to connect the base station is referred to as a primary carrier, and the mobile station transmits and receives the data traffic to and from the serving BS through the primary carrier. Further, the mobile station may additionally use a secondary carrier for transmitting and receiving the traffic.
The primary carrier is a fully configured carrier that includes a synchronization channel, a broadcast and multicast channel, and a unicast control channel for controlling transmission and reception of data. Each mobile station has only one carrier as the primary carrier in the serving BS. Contrary to this, the secondary carrier may be configured by the full configured carrier, but may be configured by a partially configured carrier that includes only the control channels for necessarily requiring the transmission and reception of the data.
The mobile station supporting the multi-carrier interrupts the transmission and reception of the data traffic to and from the serving BS, and performs only scanning of another neighbor BS for a predetermined period at the time of performing scanning in order to acquire information on the neighbor BS. Further, scanning may be performed through an additional carrier while the data traffic is transmitted to and received from the serving BS by using one carrier. For this, the known mobile communication system determines the state of the mobile station by integrally considering operation states of all carriers, and more particularly, the state and mobility of the mobile station including a scanning operation of the mobile station are managed through the primary carrier.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.